Sorting and storing baby clothes

OK, I'll say it: Babies grow quickly. You already knew this, but when you have the physical piles of clothing to prove it you have an in-your-face reminder. This reminder can also become a little daunting to sort and store.

The main reason baby clothes are challenging to sort and store, in my opinion, is that no two clothing brands label their clothes the same way, and even clothes of the same size by the same brand can seem wildly different. Of course, we can't really blame the brands -- after all what does a 6-month old look like, anyway, when mine could be 14 pounds and yours could be 20 pounds? So you've got newborn, and 0-3 months, and 3 months, and 3-6 months, and 6 months, and 6-9 months, and 6-12 months, and 9-18 months. I've tried as much as possible to organize Natalie's clothing not so much by what the label says but how the clothes match up to each other. That 0-3 month footed outfit from Naartije Kids is the same size as the 6-month footed outfit from Carter's, so those items are side-by-side in the closet. If you stick to what the label tells you, there's a good chance you'll wind up forgetting about certain articles of clothing and by the time you remember them your baby will have outgrown them.

Here's my assessment of baby clothes so far:

• Clothes that fit for the greatest amount of time: short-sleeve onesies and socks -- these stretch a lot and grow with a baby. Natalie can still wear 3-month onesies but nothing else from the 3-month category.
• Clothes that fit for the least amount of time: footed onesies/sleepers -- so many babies, Natalie included, seem to outgrow the length before the weight.
• Truest-to-size brand: Carter's -- At 8 months Natalie is wearing a combination of 6 and 9 month clothing.
• Runs-on-the-small-side brand: Gap -- Natalie could wear 6-12 months at 4 months.
• Runs-on-the-big-side brand: Circo (from Target) -- Natalie can still fit into a newborn outfit at 8 months.
• Always-seems-mislabeled-regardless-of-brand item: hats -- Natalie has so many hats, most of which she's never worn because they've never fit her. Her head is relatively small, yet which, if any, hat will fit her is a crap shoot.
• Most-amazingly-good-quality-for-the-price brand: H&M, particularly the kimono-style long-sleeve onesies made from organic cotton. These fit so well and the material is so thick. 
• Most-versatile clothes: casual dresses -- turn them into tunics with jeggings when they become too short and you've got one stylin' baby girl.

When faced with a pile of baby clothes, most of which Natalie has outgrown but some of which are toddler-sized hand-me-downs or gifts, I had to devise a system. In reading online about what other people have done I had visions of a garage full of plastic bins of baby clothes divided into tons of different categories. But most people who have elaborate systems also have at least five children -- a basketball-team's brood. We did not need anything complicated.

For now we have two piles that go into two bins: girl and gender neutral. I imagine as Natalie grows we'll have fewer gender-neutral items and more girl items, but for now this seems like a good way to get started. If we have another kid or we loan out/give away clothes, we've already reduced our workload by half just knowing if the clothes are for a girl or either sex. Right now each bin contains two piles of outgrown clothes and one pile of toddler clothes, with room to spare for the 6-month summer clothes and more that will be making their way into the bins shortly.

Now that we've freed up some dresser drawer space I've tried to better organize the clothes that she can still wear now and the clothes she'll be fitting into soon. Baby clothes seem to fall into a number of categories, especially because so many tops and bottoms come together as outfits (when does this trend stop -- with teenagers?). Natalie can still rock some 3-6 month clothes, primarily onesies, but everything else is 6 months or above. I figured I'd keep all the up to 12-month clothes out in her closet and in her dresser and not in the bins so I don't make the mistake of forgetting about any clothes that could fit her in the near future.

Never fear, Natalie has more 9-12 month clothes in her closet not pictured here. Baby clothes seem to not be in short supply, but they are most certainly cute.

Nursery progress: Storage solutions

Although our nursery space is rather small (9 feet by 10 feet) we're fortunate that it contains a really nice sized closet that came to us already containing adequate shelving. With the majority of the baby-gear purchasing over, it was time to figure out how to maximize the space. In addition to the closet, we also have storage in the bookcase and in the dresser/changing table Matt refinished.

So I decided, as I'm guessing most soon-to-be-parents do, that the dresser would house her diapering supplies and most of her clothing (with space for even more cute items to hang in the closet), and the closet would contain her bedding and similar supplies. During my trip to The Container Store a few weeks ago I used more of the gift card my students had given me last year to get several bins that would work in both the closet and the dresser.

Specifically, I found these inexpensive canvas bins in three different sizes and settled on one large bin ($11.99), two medium-sized bins ($9.99 each) and two small bins ($7.99 each). It took me a while to convince myself this was the route to go. I kept thinking I could/should go with a cuter option, or a set of wicker baskets, or something along those lines. But as I perused the store I kept coming back to the plain canvas bins. Then it finally struck me: I could decorate them. I don't know why it took me so long to figure that one out.

At first I was going to use the leftover material from the curtains, but the pattern proved too large for the size of the bins (plus I have other ideas for that material). Then when getting some more hem tape at Jo-Ann Fabrics I happened upon some iron-on decals that fit the nursery's look quite well (and one is even a bird, which fits my whole inadvertently-having-lots-of-birds-in-the-nursery motif). These also meet my requirement for decor that does not necessitate sewing. Sold. The time between arriving home with the decals and applying them to the bins was just under an hour. I also used one piece of orange scrapbook paper and my label maker to create some simple labels for the bins -- which thankfully come with built-in label space.

The big bin contains the handmade quilts and blankets Baby Awesomerod is inheriting from my own babyhood.

The two medium bins are for smaller blankets, bedding, changing pad covers and the like.

The two smaller bins, which look strikingly similar to the two medium-sized bins pictured above, contain burp cloths, bibs, and towels and washcloths.

We also have a sixth storage basket in our closet, one that came filled with books at my shower last month, and now it houses Swaddle Me wraps and Halo and Aden + Anais sleep sacks.

Inside the dresser/changing table I added a couple other inexpensive storage bins, as I discovered that not only are babies small, but so is their stuff, and it needs to be contained. I got this narrow eco-stripe drawer organizer ($7.99) for various toiletries and health items that would be useful to have on hand in the nursery (in the middle of the night? Most likely...)

 

and this small square eco-stripe drawer organizer ($4.99) is perfect for her adorable little collection of socks. So painfully cute.

On the cuteness scale, though, perhaps I spoke too soon. I used a small wooden bin that a Johnson and Johnson baby gift set came in to contain all her hats. If there's anything cuter in the world than baby socks it is undoubtedly baby hats. Bonus points for a winter baby who gets to wear adorable knit hats with bunny ears. Too much.

Finally, two shelves of the bookcase currently house two red baskets I picked up over the summer at Home Goods ($12.99 each). For now one is home to all her toys (she has an appropriate amount of toys for a newborn, which would be not that many...it seems sufficient). The other is home to miscellaneous items that needed to be corralled, including extra baby wipes, pacifiers I've picked up for free from various mom-to-be giveaways (still on the fence about pacifiers...we'll see how it goes) and items like our Bum Genius cloth diaper sprayer that we'll get around to installing in our guest bathroom upstairs when it's time to start cloth diapering (we don't plan to use the cloth diapers in the very beginning, mostly because everyone we know who has used them says they'll be too small for a newborn).

Of course, as with all things organizational, I imagine this nursery storage strategy will evolve over time as we figure out what works and what doesn't and what our specific baby needs the most.

What nursery storage hints have you discovered work for you?

I did it...I organized my socks

Put this on the list of "things that I must accomplish before the baby arrives" not because it really changes my life on any level, but because I have a weird perhaps nesting-type compulsion to get this done. During my Container Store run last weekend I picked up this $7.99 32-compartment drawer organizer. I decided against buying another set of the Real Simple clear organizers I picked up for $4 at Bed Bath and Beyond for my hosiery drawer because I felt like my socks are bulkier and need to be more compartmentalized.

Now, these before and after shots are not really fair because I took the before photo at night and the after photos during the day, so it's sort of like those bad plastic surgery photos where, if the person was only smiling in the original photo, the transformation would not be nearly as significant. Oh well.

Before -- pajamas and socks intermingle in the wild.

After -- even Matt admits that he would like a sock drawer organizer. (He says something along the lines of, "I don't need it, but I wouldn't be upset if you decided to do that for me." This will likely be a maternity leave mini-project.)

This is on my ever-growing list of tiny things that make my life a little easier and give me a little more order over my space on this planet.

Desk organization: Making the most of (new) limited storage

In our attempts to get our house ready for Baby Awesomerod's arrival (in six weeks!) one truth has become increasingly apparent: we have less space. Specifically, at this moment, we have less storage. When one of your bedrooms is taken over by baby stuff and you basically have to figure out how to lose a room in your house without cluttering up the rest of the house, it's time to start getting creative.

You might recall that our desk underwent a major downsizing this summer when we switched from a large, old IKEA desk to a very small but quite functional Target desk. This also means the original desk of four drawers and a large attached filing cabinet area has been narrowed down to a desk of one narrow drawer. I've had to store paper products in the guest room's nightstand, which is fine considering that piece of furniture was completely empty before. I've also abandoned my long-standing cord organization system and reduced it down to the bare essentials inside our new small desk.

Until this weekend, the inside of the new desk looked like this:

Not bad, right? I've taken the items I use most often and kept them within easy reach.

But the new cord/charger system was still getting on my nerves.

And my mismatched mini containers inside the drawer were all different heights, and one in particular kept scraping against the inside of the top of the drawer every time I'd open it.

So over the weekend I took a trip to the happiest place on earth -- aka The Container Store -- and used a gift certificate my fantastic senior students from last year gifted me (thanks again, guys!). Among many other things, mostly for the baby, that I picked up there is this 6-piece acrylic desk organizer that is absolutely perfect for the width and height of my drawer. I had no idea if it would fit or not while I was in the store (I forgot to write down the dimensions in my handy little notebook) but I took a quick estimate and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I'd found perfection. (Fun fact, speaking of my notebook: I was looking inside my notebook at my list of items to pick up and dimensions to keep in mind when a Container Store employee stopped me and said, "Wow, a whole notebook, I am really impressed with your organization!" You know you've made it when a Container Store employee makes that comment.)

Although it's not a major change, having a better cord solution is already making finding my camera accessories a little easier. I'll share more of my Container Store acquisitions soon. All I can say is it's a good thing that store is not particularly convenient to my house.

Real Simple drawer organizers for the win!

No matter how organized we may be, we all have that space in our house that needs some help. More likely than not, that space is something behind closed doors, as in a closet or a junk drawer. Having conquered the junk drawer in the kitchen in April when Jen at IHeart Organizing issued her challenge, I thought I should organize my sock drawer next. You know, that sounds like a ball, right? Isn't "I'm busy organizing my sock drawer" right up there with "I'm busy washing my hair" in terms of lines girls would tell guys as code for "I really don't want to go out on a date with you"? (Back when I was on the market I was a bit more direct, known for telling one boy in particular that it was the worst date of my life and he should never call me again....I digress).

If you're needing to actually organize your sock drawer (and not simply avoid the prospects of a bad date) pick up a pack of these Real Simple Drawer Organizer Sets. I got my three-piece set at Bed Bath and Beyond for $4. The $4 I shelled out for this little helper is right up there with the $4 I spent on our new desk cord organizing system as some of the best money I've ever spent on a simple yet effective solution.

I guess it's more accurate to call this my "hosiery drawer" seeing as it really holds my old-lady knee-highs and my more stylish tights and leggings. These are really items I use during the cooler weather months, so in an effort to take stock (pun intended) for this fall/winter, I wanted a better system for seeing the goods. I've noticed for me that when items such as my necklaces are clearly visible and not piled on top of one another I'm more likely to use what I own.

I'm loving this new system and I think I'll be buying another set to organize my real sock drawer soon.

(In a life update from last week, after my rant about my doctor's receptionist's behavior on Friday I'm happy to report that my appointment on Friday was totally normal. Not only is everything going well, which is what matters most, but also my doctor was somewhat in disbelief that her receptionist called me to cancel my appointment since my doctor never asked her to do that and she couldn't figure out why the receptionist was behaving in such a way. My doctor does schedule appointments at 4:30 and even later, she does leave voicemails, and she sounded like she would be giving the receptionist a talking to. At least my doctor did not sanction such behavior and I can continue to have faith in her.)

The closet shuffle, take 1

Doesn't it seem like every home-owning-young-couple-about-to-have-a-baby converts their office into the nursery? Add us to the list. Our office is the smallest of the three bedrooms in our house, but it has the second-biggest closet (right behind the master bedroom closet), which means plenty of storage, so we (crossing fingers) shouldn't need too much more storage than the to-be-refinished dresser we bought over the weekend.

While I made no serious effort to decorate (or even paint) the office in the past four and a half years, knowing (and then eventually hoping) it would one day be the nursery, our office closet has been fully utilized the whole time we've lived here. As some preliminary nursery preparation, I took advantage of some of my travel-free and work-free time this week to start shuffling the items from the office closet to the smaller guestroom closet. Here's our starting point:

Bigger office closet (soon-to-be nursery closet):

Smaller guestroom closet:

The office closet housed photo albums, files, over-flow books that don't fit into our two bookcases, craft supplies, a container of gift wrap, a container of gift bags, my wedding dress, some sentimental items and a few miscellaneous items. The guestroom closet housed some dog supplies, some busted pillows the dogs have semi-destroyed over the years (that I may or not ever learn how to fix), board games, Matt's guitar, and two containers of my school files that I organized last summer and that temporarily are hanging out in there this summer until September. 

I needed to find a way to get the contents of the office closet mostly contained within the smaller guestroom closet. This involved first sifting through all the contents of the office closet, which was kind of fun seeing as a lot of the items in there contain a lot of memories. I love finding old letters from long-time friends writing about their then-boyfriends now-husbands, or the funniest find so far: a postcard Matt sent me in 2001 when he was studying aboard in Spain, approximately two years before we started dating. Turns out I had a lot of loose letters and cards like that in several containers throughout the closet, so I consolidated and filed them in my special container for all-time-favorite cards.

Once virtually everything was consolidated and quite a few items were thrown out, it was time to start moving. The container of gift bags and the box containing my wedding dress fit nicely under the queen bed in the guestroom, and I figure our future guests won't be needing under-the-bed storage, so I stowed those items away to free up some space in the guestroom closet. I also found a couple items that make more sense housed in the garage, such as sporting goods, and a couple household items, such as tealight and votive candles, that make make more sense housed in the linen closet with other similar home equipment. Other than that, though, I needed to get everything else into the guestroom closet.

Although this is still a work in progress, here's the end result after about six hours of work spread over the course of two days:

Current office closet:

This photo emphasizes the improperly installed shelf on the left-hand side that we'll be fixing soon. I couldn't move everything quite yet as I still figure out some storage solutions for the closet shuffle, so here's what remains:

We've started to outgrow the accordion-file system I started to develop when we got married and then added to a year and a half ago. So, I'm currently on the lookout for an affordable two-drawer file cabinet (preferably made of wood) that could be housed at the bottom of the guestroom closet. Craigslist might be the best source for this, not surprisingly.

Also still hanging out in the office closet are these random items. I know I can easily fit most of this inside the guestroom closet, but I think it makes sense to get the file system squared away before attempting any further reorganizing. If you look closely, you'll notice that one of the items on the middle shelf is my Cabbage Patch Kids kindergarten backpack, which is the holding pen for my childhood keychain collection. Sentimental and unnecessary, right? Hmmmm...

Doc gives his seal of approval to the added floor space inside the office closet, a perfect dog hang out. (Note: This is Doc's happy face.) 

So here's the current state of the guestroom closet:

On closer inspection, you'll see this shelf of mostly Stephanie and Matt memorabilia...

...our stack of board games. We love Taboo! (and I am horrible at Trivial Pursuit)...

...a stack of books temporarily arranged vertically that represents my recent past, present, and future...

...and a consolidated and better-organized gift wrap container that also houses some empty poster tubes (and some occupied poster tubes that include, you know, my bachelor and Master's degrees, and the day's greatest find, my New Kids on the Block poster I bought in 1st grade. Congratulations to me for Hangin' Tough all these years.)

It's nice to have made a serious dent in this closet shuffle project at this time when I don't have much else going on. Although I originally wouldn't have planned it this way, it kind of works out perfectly that I'm spending my summer in my second trimester, when I have the time and the energy to get some preparations done.

New storage, first nursery purchase

Today's post is a bit of a mash-up because our lives are a bit of a mash-up these days...We took advantage of the holiday weekend and did a lot of Craigslisting (more on that in a bit).

We had cleaned out our backyard storage shed while the electricians were working on our master bathroom last week. Cleaning out the shed partially involved properly disposing of 12 gallon cans of latex paint, some fertilizer and engine oil left behind by the house's previous owners. So we investigated our county's household hazardous waste policies and came across this information. Somewhat surprisingly, according to the site, latex paint can be thrown in the regular trash, but I felt weird about kicking buckets and buckets of paint to the curb, so we loaded the items in the trunk of my little Protege and took it to the dump. (The timing also worked out, seeing as they accept household hazardous waste drop offs Thursday through Sunday only.)

Say adios to shed clutter!

There were a number of other still-usable items in our shed that we no longer needed (and a couple in our garage that we needed to clean out in order to make way in the garage for needed shed items). So we posted the following on Craigslist by Saturday afternoon and all were off our hands by Sunday afternoon:

• Push lawnmower -- sold for $30 (Matt uses a GrassHog, currently housed in our garage, to cut our limited backyard grass)
• Recycling bin -- free. Once we started our recycling can experiment successfully we no longer needed the open-air container.
• Two brass fixtures -- free. One used to hang in our entryway, one used to be on our back porch.
• Bag of gravel -- free
• 41" by 57" mirror -- free. This actually came from our master bathroom and had been hanging out in our garage for the last week.

We also had a space heater and some gardening pots we weren't going to use, so Saturday morning while someone else in our neighborhood was having a yard sale Matt took the items to the curb with a sign marked "Free" figuring someone might want to pick them up, and sure enough within minutes they were gone. Genius strategy! I love getting rid of stuff we no longer need; it is so liberating.

With items Craigslisted or given away, we had only a few items we needed to fit into our garage, namely some gardening supplies (mulch, topsoil, grass seed, shovels, gloves), the aforementioned GrassHog, a plastic wheelbarrow and a giant blue tarp. After rearranging a little, we got the tarp and wheelbarrow into our pre-existing garage storage space, the GrassHog can easily rest in the corner with the rake and ladder, and we just needed something for our gardening supplies.

We clearly do not need that shed! Everything leftover from the shed has easily fit in our garage.

I searched online and found several ideal and affordable options for storing gardening supplies at Target, and while I was prepared to order an outdoor storage bin online I was pleased to discover the one I was looking for (this Suncast 50-gallon deck box) was actually in stock at our local store for $60. After taking the five minutes needed to assemble it (no tools required!) it perfectly lived up to our estimations of space and storage ability. So it's currently hanging out in another corner of our garage, though Matt would like to move it to our patio once it's installed. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other.

You might notice in the above wide-angle garage shot that there's one other large item in our garage. That's right, on the left-hand side you may have spotted our first baby purchase. We'll be getting three big-ticket items for the nursery: a crib (obviously), a chair of some kind (exact type TBD), and a dresser that can double as a changing table. We (let's be honest...I) decided to start with the dresser/changing table. I knew I didn't want an actual changing table because of its limited functionality as the child grows. And, I don't care about things being all matchy-matchy in the nursery (and I don't have an absolute vision of what the nursery will look like either). So I thought the dresser would be the place to start. But what should I look for in a dresser that will double as a changing table?

I had a couple requirements:

• Safety -- obviously, it should be well built.
• Made out of real wood -- I figured a real wooden dresser could be more stable and therefore safer than one made of a lighter material, and I also hoped it could last for more than a few years.
• Affordability -- whether I bought a new or used dresser, I didn't want to exceed $200.

Something I had to research was changing table size. How high should it be? How wide is a changing table pad? I found this useful post from one of the blogs I read, Ohdeedoh, and discovered that a changing table is approximately 36" high and that a changing table pad is 17" wide. The user comments at the bottom of the post were also helpful. It sounded like a lot of parents like the IKEA Hemnes 3-drawer chest, which is a cute option at $200 and meets the general dimension specifications, but it is not all made of wood. We had just been in World Market where I spotted this Dark Mahogany Chase 3-drawer dresser for $300, and then someone on Craigslist was selling it for $200. But as I kept scrolling through Craiglists postings I started to find a few dressers that were the right size that would work as changing tables if given a little TLC. So I settled on this $40 3-drawer wooden dresser.

I see lots of potential in this well-built piece of furniture. So we'll add "refinish changing table" to our summer bucket list. We haven't tried to tackle anything like this before, but the good news is that we have time on our side and this post from Young House Love to get us started (although their project and ours are not exactly identical in terms of the dresser materials we're trying to refinish). Do you have any additional advice for novice furniture refinishers?

Pen organizer repurposing

Sorry for the lack of posts last week. We are in the middle of several projects that I will share with you once there's visible progress to share. In the meantime, here's a quick repurposing fix.

You know I'm all about decluttering as well as reusing and just generally reducing the number of items that come into our home. That's why last March I looked at an empty box that used to contain bath fizzies from Origins (and I do believe that's their proper name). I saw in that little cardboard box the potential to be a handy pen organizer once I added some make-shift cardboard compartments. It was working just fine.

Then I tried that indoor basil and mint experiment in February using three small planters a friend gave me a couple years ago. I love the little planters, but getting herbs or really anything else to grow in them proved nearly impossible for me. (And now that outdoor herbs are taking off so well, the need for indoor herbs is nil.)

So, I took that three mini-planter set that was still (for some unknown reason) sitting on a stool in our living room, and I gave it new life once and for all. Now, it's in a position of honor atop the office desk, serving its purpose nicely as a three-compartment pen organizer. With added space, it also means I get to display my colorful Sharpies and hopefully grab for them more often for handmade greeting cards and the like.

The desktop looks a little more refined now, right?

What items have you recently repurposed around your house?

Conquer the junk drawer

We all have them, and they can all get pretty unruly.

Too often I've found myself digging through that drawer at the corner of our kitchen island, furiously looking for a working pen while getting ready to jot down important information during a phone call, or wondering where all those stamps went when it's time to send out some mail.

After a while, for me, it was the cell phone chargers and headphones that really screamed out how badly this small but mighty nook of our home needed some organization. Somewhat miraculously, this also was about the time Jen at IHeart Organizing issued her junk drawer challenge. The photos of reader mini-projects on her post are totally inspirational, and there isn't much to be said here, so I'll let the photos do the talking.

Here's what I came up with after about 10 minutes and three inexpensive containers from Bed Bath and Beyond (all found in the kitchen gadget organization section of the store):

It's nice to know our spare keys, return address stamp, summer pool passes, mini flashlight and extra matches all have an organized home, but I'm most happy about the fact that when I open this drawer I no longer have to contain a tangle of cords.

Have you tamed your beast of a junk drawer? If you're looking for a place to begin organizing your home, this is an awesome place to start.

More containers for the pantry

Yesterday during my Home Goods run I also wandered into Target and picked up four cheap containers to help reorganize our pantry.

The thought occurred to me a couple months ago when I used an old plastic shoe box to corral all the small cleaning items thrown around under our kitchen sink.

See, I was getting annoyed with the way all the staples on the top shelf of our pantry were looking.

So I took stock of our current pantry and realized that our top shelf items could be mostly categorized into four groups: oils, vinegars and sauces; breads and spreads; Asian; Italian. Four bins it is! I had to find bins in two different sizes so they would: 1) fit in the space and 2) have various widths to accommodate the different sized objects.

One of the bins had a particularly difficult sticker to remove. Thank goodness for Goo Gone!

Somehow each bin managed to miraculously hold all the items I intended for it (though there were still a few items I couldn't quite categorize that are still hanging out solo in the pantry).

And, I'm happy to report that I finally had an excuse to whip out the labelmaker -- that had up until today only been used in my classroom -- for home use!

 

Because the top shelf of the pantry was by far the most disorganized I didn't really need to touch the rest of the pantry to make a serious impact on its overall look. (Our middle shelf carries mostly snack foods, and our bottom shelf carries bulk products: dog food, extra flour and sugar bags, bulk olive oil and canola oil jugs, a giant box of granola bars and cereal.)

Approximately 45 minutes and $13 later, I am quite pleased with the results. Even though our pantry is relatively modest in size and I can't fit everything together in one neat row, the reason I prefer this new system is I can now move an entire container out onto the counter when I'm trying to reach something in the back instead of having to move several individual items. Check out this easy-to-achieve after shot compared to the before.

In addition to this pantry space and our fabulous new fridge, I should also note that we have another cabinet space with a spice rack where we also store other pantry items, which mostly includes all our baking goods, but that space is already reasonably well organized.

What are your solutions for keeping your pantry organized?